35,000 DS Lites shifted

The DS Lite is proving pretty popular with UK gamers, it seems - more than 35,000 units have been shifted since the redesigned handheld launched here on Friday.

The original DS did a bit better when it launched, with 87,000 units sold in the first two days - and the Lite has not sold out, with plenty of stock available across the country. But that's still not a bad start, especially since everyone's too busy watching the football to go down the shops.

"It didn't set the world on fire, but I don't think we were expecting it to," ChartTrack's Dorian Bloch told our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz.

"You can call it good as they've managed to sell 35,000 even though the football's on. I tend to think it doesn't make much difference to what the year total will be, because those who haven't bought it yet will buy it as soon as their attention has moved on from something else."

ChartTrack confirmed that sales of the White and Black models were split 50/50 while, significantly, Lite's appearance didn't affect sales of either the original DS or the PSP.

"Original DS sold through the same as it did the previous week. Who's buying it? The answer is in the pink one - DS Pink made up half of original DS sales last week, bundled with Nintendogs Daschund," Bloch said.

"PSP sales are actually up - week 25 was actually up quite a lot anyway in terms of software and hardware, because we've gone past the really, really low point now. We're not going to have a week as low as the past couple of weeks. But that's the traditional low point anyway, which hasn't been helped by the football."

The launch of the Lite also boosted DS software sales, with eight DS-exclusive titles in the all-formats top 40 this week - the same number as at the launch of the original system.

Around 1.3 million original DS units have now been sold in the UK. It retails for £89.99, while the Lite is £99.99. A massive 2.2 million Lites have been sold in Japan since the handheld launched there on March 2nd, and more than 136,000 were sold in the first two days after it launched in the US on June 11th.